


Beautiful Like Tigers

by Josey (cestus), junko



Series: Shattered Souls [7]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:12:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cestus/pseuds/Josey, https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zabimaru finally has her own gigai and Renji is coping… or is he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful Like Tigers

**Author's Note:**

> This is a canon divergence that takes place after the Aizen’s betrayal and before the Bount Arc.

Ichigo stood over Renji frowning. Ichigo always looked fierce, but there was something particularly… annoying about his expression. “What are you looking at?” Renji barked, tearing into his third―or was it fourth?--hamburger.

“Are you sick or something?”

Renji had to suppress a growl. Pity. Concern. That’s what Renji had seen in Ichigo’s eyes that he didn’t like. “Why the fuck do you care?”

“I don’t,” Ichigo lied, plopping down cross-legged on the rooftop across from him. 

After the kids had showed Renji how to jimmy the lock to get the exit door open that first day, he’d been coming up here for lunch ever since―with or without the usual gang. For the last several days it had been very intentionally without. Damn if Kurosaki didn’t keep finding him and drawing him back into the group, however. At least today he’d come alone. 

Ichigo pointed the straw of his juice box at Renji, “But, you know, I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to starve a fever.”

“A fever? Now what the hell are you on about?”

“Dude,” Ichigo said, poking the straw into the box top. “It’s, like twenty-eight degrees out. I don’t think you need the jacket.”

Twenty-eight? It was that warm? Renji had been feeling a chill deep in his bones, a coldness he couldn’t even shake by cornering Zabimaru in a backroom and pounding himself into her until he thought his cock would fall off.

“Not that it’s not cool-looking,” Ichigo was saying, unwrapping a cod roe onigiri. “Where did you even get a leather bomber jacket? Is that vintage?”

The mistake Ichigo made was reaching out to touch him to feel the leather, or maybe give him a playful poke. Renji didn’t even remember slapping his hand away so violently, but, all of a sudden, he was straddling Ichigo and pounding his face with his fists. Then, Ichigo slammed his knee into Renji’s crotch with the same force he put behind Zangetsu and deftly rolled out from under him. 

“Seriously, man, what is wrong with you?” Ichigo asked standing up to look down his nose at Renji. Renji lay on the ground, his hands cradling his balls and gave Ichigo the burning dark look he usually saved for Byakuya. Ichigo picked up his spilled juice box and dusted the asphalt crumbs off his onigiri. “Do you need to kill some Hollows with me or something? Or….maybe… I don’t know, go get laid?”

Renji let out a dry laugh, as he slowly unwound himself to sit up. “Fucking ain’t enough any more. I need to kill shit and eat it.”

Ichigo had been nodding along, frowning at his rice cake, but then looked up sharply. “Did you say ‘eat it’?”

Renji sat all the way back and returned to devouring the squashed remains of the hamburger. Grit crunched in his teeth. “I dunno. Did I?”

“Yeah, you kind of did,” Ichigo said, now eyeing Renji warily.

“Well, that sounds about right. I’m starving.”

#

Renji didn’t go back to class. He told Ichigo he had to pee and that he’d catch up with him, and, instead, doubled back toward the roof. It took some skillful negotiating―almost more cogent brain power than Renji had, actually―to dodge Ishida and his smug questions about how reading about the proletariat revolution was going. It was even more difficult not to strangle Orihime when she spontaneously thrust some kind of invitation to the sewing club’s annual open house and craft show into his hand.

Renji needed to be alone. He had to get far away from all the noise, bustle, and the crush of people. 

Too many goddamn souls. Crowding him and smelling so… good, like raw meat. 

The only person he could stand to be around these days was Zabimaru, and even she was getting a little bitchy. Always going on about needing alone time, yakking on and on about this secret project she was working on for the Soul Society. Whatever. At least she never complained about the sex. She seemed to want it at least as much, if not more, than he did. In fact, they’d started a fun game―chase and pounce. It was like a perverted sort of hide and seek, only bloodier. One of them would try to sneak up on the other, and, depending on how successful you were stalking your prey, either you fought them or fucked them. Fucking was winning, of course. But, Renji found he didn’t care so much these days if he won or lost. Fighting was satisfying in its own way, especially since Zabi didn’t hold back. Turns out, a nue can pack a powerful upper cut even in gigai.

Renji smiled as he rubbed the bruise under his jaw, remembering the sweet coppery tang of his own blood in his mouth.

His stomach growled.

He rubbed his abdomen absently, feeling the ache there. The sensation of having pulled a muscle in his core had only gotten worse since the separation operation. Despite all the food he shoved down his gullet, Renji swore he was losing weight, too. There was a sharp indentation just below his belly button where the skin seemed to sag. Renji found he could stick finger into it almost up to his first knuckle.

He should probably tell Urahara about it, but every time he saw that guy all Renji wanted to do was… well, fuck him or get fucked by him. 

In fact, both Urahara and Tessai smelled sexy as hell to Renji lately. It was… disturbing to be staring at them over the breakfast table, his mind churning, wondering which of them had the bigger dick and where exactly Renji could convince either of them to stick it. Hmmm, suddenly, both sounded even better. But, if he had to pick one, Renji’d choose Urahara, actually. Sure, Tessai had the size that would make a person figure him for the bigger man, but Urahara was all coiled power and liquid grace. That’s what Renji wanted these days.

He was pretty sure that was part of why he’d ended up on top of Ichigo, too. 

Now there was a kid that reeked of tasty. He was like a giant ball of orange candy wrapped in sex… and bacon.

Bacon sounded really good right now, Renji thought. His nose had caught a whiff of one of those fast food places that served American-style food. Clambering over the school yard fence, Renji made a bee-line for it. Meat, meat, with meat sauce. That was the breakfast of champions.

#

"Oi! Geta-boushi! You in there? Oi!"

Kisuke groaned at Kurosaki junior's dulcet tones reverberating off the shoji and dragged the blanket over his head. Between the demands of conditioning the new mod-souls and his research, which was taking some fascinating turns, this was the first time Kisuke's head had hit the pillow in days. Let Tessai deal with him, he thought, just this once. 

A deep rumble followed by a loud thump suggested Tessai had indeed stepped in, the wonderful man.

Kurosaki yelled something incomprehensible in the distance and the front door slammed. Did that mean he was gone? Kisuke hoped so. On the other hand, it wasn't like Ichigo to drop by without being told. What had he wanted? Had it been something important? 

He rolled over, half ready to get up and find out. Then, _Sleep now, worry later._ Benihime tugged on his consciousness, pulling him under. Kisuke went without a fight.

It was well after dark when he finally surfaced. Not caring about the time, and in desperate need of an empty and then a refill, Kisuke rolled out of bed and staggered for the bathroom. He was halfway through a much needed piss and was peering into the darkened window to examine his whiskers, when a face suddenly loomed up on the other side of the glass.

Kisuke screeched and back-pedalled across the mat, just as Ichigo roared, "Fucking hell, dude, I so did not need to see that!" And in the chaos that followed the entire household ended up awake and in an uproar. It wasn't until he'd endured a scolding from Ururu – who had to clean up – snide comments from Jinta about aim and ping pong balls, and general disapproval from Tessai, that things calmed enough for him to catch his breath.

Armed with a full coffee mug, a warm blanket and his hat, Kisuke sat opposite Ichigo at the low table and fixed him with a level look. 

Ichigo, in his shinigami form and with Zangetsu across his knees, glared back belligerently, then finally huffed and stared off to the side. "I need to talk to you," he said, eyes fixed on the wall.

"How nice. I enjoy our conversations as well. But why exactly did you think three am was a appropriate time to pay a house call?"

"I told you. And when I came by earlier the big guy said you weren't around. Which was total bullshit, by the way, because this place always feels different when you're not here." By the time he'd finished that little rant, he was glaring at Kisuke again, his eyes bright and annoyed. 

So he had needed something. "And now you have my undivided attention. What can I do for you, Kurosaki-san."

It took a while to get there. Ichigo hemmed and hawed and generally acted as though someone was trying to force a confession out of him, but eventually he muttered, "It's about Renji. There's something up with him."

Which raised an excellent question. Just where was Abarai anyway? And for that matter, Zabimaru? Neither had appeared during the chaos earlier.

Kisuke searched briefly for their reiatsu, expecting to find them doing what had become their usual pastime these days. And came up empty. Neither of them were in the building. Which wasn't unusual for Abarai if he'd been called out to deal with a hollow, but was for Zabimaru.

She'd been driving Kisuke to distraction in the past week or so. He couldn't work out if she was trying to seduce him or kill him, but either way, he hadn't been able to turn around without falling over her. And now she was gone. Strange. 

"What about Abarai?" he asked sharply, his mind already veering off to deal with more important matters... 

"He was supposed to meet up with me for patrol and never showed. And earlier he was going on and on about wanting to eat stuff and being starving."

"Perhaps he missed lunch." ….like a zanpakutō loose in Karakura. This had disaster written all over it. In his head Kisuke began carving up the town and assigning sections to searchers.

"It wasn't that. I think..." The words stumbled to a halt in cloud of teenaged 'not caring'. 

Kisuke gave Ichigo a sharp look, his normally tightly-reined temper slipping. "If you have something useful to contribute, Kurosaki-san, please do so, otherwise I have something vitally important I should be handling." Before she does something that will get me hung, drawn and quartered, he didn't add aloud.

When Ichigo still failed to speak, Kisuke got up to leave. He was at the door when Ichigo finally broke.

"Fuck it," Ichigo muttered. "Look, I know it sounds stupid, but I think he's turning into a hollow."

Kisuke froze, numbers and facts which had been dancing incomprehensibly in his head for over a week suddenly dropping into place like coins into slots. Jackpot. He closed his eyes and swallowed thickly. Yoruichi was going to kill him. No actually, if she killed him, he was going to consider himself lucky.

"Did he give you any indication where he might be going," he asked, keeping his back to Ichigo. It wouldn't do to show how worried he was. If he did then he'd never get rid of the boy and the last thing Kisuke wanted was to involve Ichigo in either a hunt for a hollowfied fukutaichō or a rampant zanpakutō. The risks were too great.

Ichigo harrumphed. "No, but going by what he's been like recently, I'd say find the nearest twenty four hour burger place. He's addicted or something."

"Right." Feeling a little more in control, Kisuke plastered a bright smile on his face and turned to face Ichigo. "Well, thank you very much, Kurosaki-san, you've been most helpful tonight. Now I'm sure you have homework of some description you should be do-"

A hard flare of reiatsu cut across his words. Ichigo was on his feet and across the room, Zangetsu across his shoulder and as expression as belligerent as Kisuke had ever seen it. "Hey, no way! You're not leaving me out of this. Renji's my friend, damn it! If he's in trouble then I'm not gonna just walk away."

Heaven save him from heroes and martyrs. Kisuke sighed. "It really isn't that simple."

"The hell, it isn't! Hollow or not, I'm stronger than he is so I'll go get him, drag him back here and you can fix him."

"Like I did you?" Kisuke asked quietly. 

Ichigo froze, face stricken.

Kisuke continued in the same even tone. "It might have escaped your notice, Kurosaki-san, but once a soul has begun to hollowfy, there is nothing anyone can do for them. It is entirely up to the individual in question to fight off the effects. I'm afraid, should Abarai-fukutaichō succumb to his inner hollow, there will be no alternative but to destroy him. Are you prepared to do that?"

For a moment Ichigo didn't move, then he snarled "Shit," and spun away, aiming a fist at the wall. It went straight through both wood and paper and he stopped, hand stuck through it and out the other side.

Kisuke watched in silence as his shoulders slowly dipped, head drooping between them and when he spoke, Kisuke had to strain to hear him. "How can I help Renji with his hollow," he whispered, "when I can't even control my own?"

Ah, that explained much about what had been happening recently. Though Kisuke would have preferred a little more warning before having that particular bombshell dropped on him. Shinji loathed surprises. "Luckily yours is not such a serious problem," he said. "There are ways and means of dealing with an inner hollow which has been successfully subdued once. Abarai-fukutaichō, on the other hand..." 

He didn't bother finishing the sentence. From what Kisuke had seen of him, Abarai wasn't the type to resist his baser urges at the best of times, which didn't bode well for his chances of fighting the transformation. And Ichigo had to be aware of that. Their best hope was to find Zabimaru and reunite her with Abarai as soon as possible. With luck, the return of his zanpakutō would nullify the effects of the hollowfication. Or at least give him the backbone to fight it. 

"We can't just abandon him," Ichigo was saying, still looking shell-shocked. It was such an alien look on the normally indefatigable boy's face that Kisuke fluttered in sheer self-defence.

"Did anyone say abandon? No, no, there'll be none of that! Now if you could just remove you arm from my wall..."

Ten minutes later, everyone was out of bed again and Ichigo had left to wake Chad and Orihime who, he insisted, would both want to be in on the hunt. 

Kisuke, abandoning his plans for further training since Ichigo was bound to get all he could handle from the Vizard, quickly added Abarai and Zabimaru's details to his new mod souls and got them into gigai. If worst came to the worst, they now had a small army to take on their renegades, which meant Ichigo wouldn't be forced into killing Abarai himself.

#

If there was a worse part of Karakura Town, Renji didn’t know where it could be. He’d tried everything to numb the pain in his stomach, and now he leaned his hands on the wall behind the dumpster and threw up. Everything he’d consumed in the last several hours came back in heaving waves of disgusting, rank spew. There was a lot. Beer. Noodles. Drugs. Strangers’ bodily fluids. Whiskey. Everything. The gigai clearly couldn’t take the abuse any more, because it all came out in a hot, horrible rush.

As Renji clung to the bricks, his shaking fingers digging into the mortar painfully, and spitting the last of the foul taste from his mouth, it finally dawned on him that something might be wrong with him. Because, you know what? The puke smelled almost good. Like he might be hungry for some of that.

Still letting the wall support most his weight, Renji slid one hand under the waist of his jeans. The aching hole just under his bellybutton was getting bigger. A lot bigger. Some part of the gigai was disappearing, collapsing in on itself… hollowing out.

Hollowing.

That last thought caused a fresh rush of ice to course through Renji’s veins. He continued to lean against the wall shaking and shivering for a long time. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.

A Hollow. He was turning into a god-damn Hollow.

Taking a shuddering breath, Renji wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He stood up to fish through his pockets for the Pez dispenser Urahara had given him. The plastic monkey head looked kind of obscene when its jaw unhinged and offered up a pale green pill. Shaking it out, Renji held it in his palm for a second, wondering if this was the right choice. But he had to know: was there something defective about Urahara’s doll’s design, or was there a huge, fucking hole dropping out of his guts?

He popped the ‘soul candy’ in his mouth. The taste of smoky incense barely covered with minty freshness threatened to cramp his stomach again, but he managed to quickly dry swallow it. The second he choked it down his raw and scratched throat, Renji felt a strange, powerful push. It was like some giant hand shoved him hard in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Then, all of a sudden, he stood over his body as it crumpled into a heap in the dark alley. 

Only taking a moment to consider how much like some wasted junkie the mod soul looked with his cheek inches from a pool of steaming vomit and moaning pathetically, Renji started to frantically pull at the obi that held his shihakushō together. The obi unwound quickly. Zabimaru clattered to the pavement. Once the hakama slipped down his hips, he pulled apart the kosode and shitagi, cursing the stupid strings of the white undershirt and his clumsy, anxious fingers. 

Finally, he could see it: a black pit about the size of ping pong ball just under his belly button. He hunched over awkwardly trying to see if he could see through it, and, briefly, he thought he was safe… that it hadn’t gone all way yet. But fingers at his back found the exit, just barely above the crack of his butt cheeks. The backside of the hole was significantly smaller, he could only barely stick his finger inside it.

The damn thing must have pushed through sometime today. That’s why he couldn’t fill himself any more, why the hunger had become beyond insatiable… it had turned into something broken, ravenous, and mindless. 

Renji stood for a long time in the alley just trying to remember to breathe. His fingers poked through either side of the hole until they met somewhere in his empty core. His brain buzzed and whirred, completely blank with horror.

Then he slowly, deliberately took his fingers out of the emptiness and started dressing. Crouching down he retrieved Zabimaru. As he shoved his zanpakutō into place at his hip, a slow sort of seething anger roiled through his empty, aching guts. If this was happening to him, it could be happening to her; to Zabimaru.

If it was the last thing he did as a sentient human being, he’d fucking kill that Urahara Kisuke. 

Renji should have known to trust his first instinct: sink his fangs into that twisted scientist’s throat and watch him bleed. Yeah, if he was going to go down as some kind of souped-up Hollow, he’d use whatever power he had at his disposal to tear Urahara limb from limb. 

And then he’d eat his heart. That would satisfy the hunger.

#

By the time Renji was floating over Urahara Shoten, his shoulders felt hunched and stiff. His hands had curled into sharp, bone white claws, and he felt a slashing, segmented tail at his back. He hardly had any thoughts left in his head, only two directives: protect Zabimaru and kill…. Kill them all.

He couldn’t remember who he was supposed to murder any more, only that he needed to sink his growing fangs into someone, maybe slice them to ribbons with his jagged tail, and that it needed to be violent, bloody and oh, so tasty.

But he wanted her more than any of that―the one that possessed the name he repeated over and over like a mantra: Zabimaru.

Zabimaru was the only thing that kept the roar in the back of his mind from overwhelming everything. If he could just find her, the pain would stop. The howling madness would end. 

She… no, ‘they’ were somewhere nearby―trapped? 

He was ready to use his claws to scrabble through wall and stone to reach her, when someone stood in his way and called out a name he barely remembered: “Renji? Holy crap, is that you?”

**Author's Note:**

> [Vizard Renji](http://junko222.deviantart.com/#/d5mt8jz) and [Hollow!Renji](http://junko222.deviantart.com/#/d5mt8be) by junko.


End file.
